Honolulu, United States · December
Pacing the Honolulu Marathon
Hot and humid, with Diamond Head twice
A large, welcoming race with no time limit, run in tropical conditions with two passes of Diamond Head. Heat and humidity, rather than the elevation profile, are what shape the pacing.
Official site: dates and entry
Dates, ballots and entry rules change every year and are not listed here. Check the official site.
How to pace it
The course itself is not especially difficult. The conditions are, and they are the whole pacing problem, so a plan built around the elevation profile is answering the wrong question.
Heat and humidity work differently from ordinary fatigue. An early start helps but does not solve it, because the second half is run as the sun comes up. A pace that feels comfortable in the dark at 6 km becomes unsustainable by 30 km not because your legs are tired in the usual sense but because you can no longer shed heat fast enough to keep going at that effort.
The practical consequence is that you must slow down before you feel you need to. By the time humidity has caught you, easing off no longer recovers the situation, it just limits the damage. Set a target well off your cool weather pace and drink at every station from the very first one.
Diamond Head is climbed on the way out and again on the way back, and the second pass is much harder than the first suggests.
Worth knowing
- Add real time to your flat, cool weather goal, not a token amount.
- Take fluid at every station from the start, not from when you first feel thirsty.
- There is no time limit, which makes finishing realistic but keeps the course busy for a long time.
What the common targets ask for
| Finish | Per km | Per mile |
|---|---|---|
| 3:00:00 | 4:16 | 6:52 |
| 3:30:00 | 4:59 | 8:01 |
| 4:00:00 | 5:41 | 9:09 |
| 4:30:00 | 6:24 | 10:18 |